Warbird Information Exchange

a short article in the most recent air & space smithsonian magazine mentions china's new j-10 mach 2 fighter that was developed to counter the russian mig 29. it has fly by wire technology that may be equal to the f-16, & performance close to the russian su-27. it's been in chinese service since 2003, but it's existence was top secret until december 2006 when the chinese media released the news. pakistan has been the only country offered import priveleges. cool looking plane!!! & not a peking duck!!! checkout the air & space magazine website for a pic.

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

At Pratt they said only the F-22 could top it but maybe we're just tring to sell some more engines

Hi Tom -

One of the British Av Mags (Aircraft Illustrated?) has an article on it with a fair number of photos I've not seen elsewhere. I'll take a look when I get home and post the mag and month info. Looks like the J-10 had an IAI Lavi as either the Father or the Mother....

Enjoy the Day! Mark

That's what they think... there's been a good bit of info and many photos of this jet available on the net for quite some time now.

This webpage has been around for a few years and was the first page that I found which had some fairly decent info on the type.

One of the more recent pages on this jet can be found HERE.

TONS of Images


Fade to Black...

That big intake is just begging for a AVG style shark mouth

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Is it just me or does that thing look like a hodge podge of other aircraft parts?

Pretty wild looking piece.

Exactly what I thought!

Any idea as how it compares to the F-22?

I have an idea that it doesn't... just like everything else on the planet at the moment...


Fade to Black...

My first thought was that it looks like the love child of an F-16 and a Mirage...

The program originated with the Israeli Lavi program back in the 1980s, which was an offshoot of F-16 technology that we gave to Israel.

A program which "our friends" the Israelis sold to "not our friends" the Chinese.

I hope we never have to find out for real, but I'll bet our guys are a lot better than their guys. Problem is they got a whole lot more guys.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

The J-10 pics are in the March '07 issue of Aircraft Illustrated. The pics are in the same class as some of the sites that Peter-Four-Oh had linked.

No comparison to the F-22 either - ditto for every other fighter in the world at the moment. Quantity though, that's another story....

Enjoy the Day! Mark

When I hear about stuff like this, it reminds me of how surprised we were when the A6M appeared, and we couldn't believe the Japanese mastered aircraft production. This is what the Chinese have that we know about. I wonder what is on their drawing boards?

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REMEMBER THE SERGEANT PILOTS!

Brings to mind the famous quote about Soviet equipment / manpower:
"Quantity has a quality all it's own".

Hope we never have to find out how the small future flock of F-22's can handle a swarm of these bees.
Brian

I'm not nearly as interested in the J-10 as I am the more advanced FLANKER variants.

BTW, nobody who is in the business of air-air combat is "surprised" at this thing. As others have mentioned, the airplane has been on the scene for years and years, and its general capabilities are pretty well known due to the Lavi connection.